How Batangas’ Towns and Cities Have Grown in Terms of Population Since 1970

I am old enough to recall when a trip from inside Fernando Air Base to the Lipa City market took five to six minutes. Vehicular traffic was unheard of. Roads were deserted by nine at night; household lights went off as families went to sleep. Neighborhoods were quiet but for crickets or, if the night was wet, frogs croaking. Although one naturally did not know everyone else in the city, faces were still familiar and one could easily spot somebody not from hereabouts. I am talking, of course, about the sixties and the early seventies, a far different era from the present.

Days gone by! These days, to get to the market, you need to allot at least 20 minutes – and that’s on good days. There are vehicles on the road practically round the clock. There are so many people in the city just for the day or passing through that most of the people you see even in the busiest establishments are complete strangers. Suffice it to say that these are true not just in Lipa but elsewhere in Batangas.

One does not have to be Einstein to figure out what happened. Philippine population simply burgeoned beyond imaginable levels in the 45 years from 1970 to 2015, when the last Philippine population survey was undertaken. I mean, in high school current events classes in the early seventies, we were already discussing population explosion in the country – and this was when the estimated population was 36-37 million.

To get a better appreciation of this growth from a Batangas perspective, let us examine population statistics from the 1970 Philippine Census and compare these to the one undertaken in 2015.

TOWN AND CITIES WITH THE HIGHEST POPULATIONS
It goes without saying that the highest population growth in PLAIN NUMBERS occurred in the four cities of Batangas, as the table below shows. Lipa, the province’s most highly populated geopolitical unit as per the 2015 census, grew by 238,415 from its 1970 population of 93,971. Batangas City is next, growing by 221,006 from its 1970 figure of 108,868. Batangas’ newest city Santo Tomas’ growth has been even more staggering, rising from just 31,935 in 1970 to a mind-blowing 174,909 in 2015. Of Batangas’ 30 municipalities, only Nasugbu is in the top 5 in terms of population growth, rising from 45,849 in 1970 to 88,264 in 2015.

City/Town

1970

2015

+/-

Lipa City

93,971

332,386

238,415

Batangas City

108,868

329,874

221,006

Sto. Tomas City

31,935

179,844

147,909

Tanauan City

61,910

173,366

111,456

Nasugbu

45,849

134,113

88,264

Rosario

42,704

116,764

74,060

San Juan

47,101

108,585

61,484

Lemery

32,337

93,157

60,820

Balayan

33,198

90,699

57,501

Bauan

36,862

91,297

54,435

Below is the graphic representation of the table above:

Graph of population growth in Batangas' Geo-political units from 1970 to 2015,

TOWNS AND CITIES WITH THE HIGHEST % GROWTH
Now, if one considers population growth in Batangas in terms of percentage growth IN PROPORTION to each geopolitical unit’s 1970 population, then there will be very surprising shake-ups in the rankings. This time, the new city of Santo Tomas is on top with a really staggering 463.16% growth from its 1970 population. The Municipality of Malvar has grown 297.13% from its 1970 population of 14,169 to 42,101 in 2015 for a 297.13% growth. Meanwhile San Pascual and Balete grew from 19,377 and 7,131 in 1970, respectively, to 46,047 and 15,427, respectively, for growth rates of 237.64% and 217.65%, respectively. Lipa City, the most populous geopolitical unit, grew by 253.71%, third in the entire province.

City/Town

1970

2015

% Growth

Sto. Tomas City

31,935

179,844

463.16

Malvar

14,169

56,270

297.13

Lipa City

93,971

332,386

253.71

San Pascual

19,377

65,424

237.64

Balete

7,134

22,661

217.65

San Jose

24,450

76,971

214.81

Agoncillo

12,169

38,059

212.75

Padre Garcia

15,498

48,302

211.67

Talisay

14,821

45,301

205.65

Batangas City

108,868

329,874

203.00

Below is the graphical representation of the table above:

Graph of population percentage growth in Batangas' geopolitical units.

POPULATION DENSITY OF BATANGAS’ GEOPOLITICAL UNITS
Now here’s the remarkable thing. Off-hand, anyone can be forgiven for thinking that the most congested geopolitical units in Batangas are its four cities: Batangas, Lipa, Santo Tomas and Tanauan. Indeed, these are where you find establishments crammed next to each other, crowds of people and, needless to say, the accompanying traffic.

But in terms of actual population density, i.e. the ratio of population to land area, for our purposes the number of people living per square kilometer, the numbers will spring quite a few surprises. Of course, the numbers are skewed in city centers or poblacions as we like to call them, but the geopolitical units that rank high will still raise eyebrows in terms of population density.

First, consider the 10 most densely population geopolitical units in Batangas in 1970; i.e. if the word “dense” even applies considering how the provincial population then was less than 1 million (926,308) compared to 2,377,395 in 2015.

City/Town

1970

LA (sq km)

PD 1970

Taal

24,907

29.76

836.93

Bauan

36,862

53.31

691.47

San Nicolas

8,742

14.37

608.35

Tanauan City

61,910

107.16

577.73

Sta. Teresita

9,336

16.30

572.76

Talisay

14,821

28.20

525.57

Alitagtag

12,822

24.76

517.85

San Jose

24,450

53.29

458.81

Ibaan

31,067

68.99

450.31

Lipa City

93,971

209.40

448.76

Now see how things had changed 45 years later in 2015:

City/Town

2015

LA (sq km)

PD 2015

Taal

56,327

29.76

1,892.71

Sto. Tomas City

179,844

95.41

1,884.96

Bauan

91,297

53.31

1,712.57

Malvar

56,270

33.00

1,705.15

Tanauan City

173,366

107.16

1,617.82

Talisay

45,301

28.20

1,606.42

Lipa City

332,386

209.40

1,587.33

San Nicolas

22,623

14.37

1,574.32

San Jose

76,971

53.29

1,444.38

Mataas-na-Kahoy

29,187

22.10

1,320.68

Surprised? What we see on a daily basis in Batangas City, Lipa, Tanauan and Santo Tomas is, however, urban congestion, which is a different matter altogether and, perhaps, best dealt with in another article. I suppose what these numbers tell us all is that if one cares enough to take a drive around Batangas, one will quickly realize that there are still large swathes of agricultural lands untouched by development; but also that the urban centers have grown to levels probably hard to imagine back in the late sixties when I was still a little boy.

Below is the complete table showing population statistics for each of Batangas’ geopolitical unit in 1970 and 2015, including calculated population growth and growth percentages along with density per square kilometer.

Notes and references:1 All 1970 figures from “The 1970 Census of Population and Housing,” downloaded from the Internet Archive.2 All 2015 figures from the 2015 Philippine Census, obtained from the National Statistics Authority web site.3 Land area figures for Batangas’ geopolitical units from Wikipedia.